


Recurrence

by Sarasti



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27010537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarasti/pseuds/Sarasti
Summary: "I’m not sure if happiness is the absence of suffering or the presence of elation, but if pressed I think I would choose the latter."Armin meets Eren in different lifetimes and contemplates the times they've spent together.
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	Recurrence

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a writing exercise more than anything, so this is probably very self-indulgent. Sorry.

So many times now have I wondered what could have been done differently. Was there a single point, a single choice that could have prevented that awful sight? Or was it a gradual accumulation of small events with no clear beginning and no clear end? Maybe it was all doomed from the start, and even if I had known and dedicated my life to stopping this very outcome, I would still have failed and events have taken their terrible course. Regardless, I cannot help but blame myself for all of it. The shape of your body towering above the wasteland you leave in your wake, bones the size of castle turrets dragging it forward, the only human-looking part of it a wiry skeleton hanging from threads beneath the spine… It all seems to dare one to believe that this was once the lively boy I had played tag with through the Shiganshina District. That this could ever have been a human child at all. I wanted to understand you better than anyone and truly, could anyone say that my endeavor was anything but a failure?

I do not wish to dwell on what we had to do to you to make you stop. After the deed was done and all of it was over, I hated you for a very long time. It was so cruel of you to show me such wonderful things only to turn everything around into the exact opposite. Better to have never seen the good sides of you than had the experience I had.

The anger I felt mellowed somewhat with time, but my mind could never stop picking at the wound that was you. The worst thing of all, I think, was that I did not realize how much I had loved you until I saw you as a child with Ymir on that vast plain of sand. That the ache I felt when thinking about you wasn’t just me missing and worrying about my best friend but something even more complex. Maybe if I had admitted that to myself years earlier, things could have changed for the better. Or perhaps not. So many things beyond our control were in motion behind the scenes – maybe the only way to stop the titans from trampling the world would have been for you to be born as just another person without the weight of your father’s legacy on your shoulders. Maybe you were onto something when you thought the only way to erase cruelty from the world was to erase the world itself, but it wasn’t true in the way you thought of it.

I already knew I would not see 30, and I wondered what the point was of living out a life that you know is going to be cut short, where much of the center of it has been hollowed out. I stayed around of course – but more out of a sense of obligation than anything. I did what I could to help in the rebuilding of the world that we had promised we would see together, and passed away quietly in my apartment in the rapidly expanding port town on Paradis once my time was up. There isn’t much to say about it, I never could find anyone like you to spend my days with, and the guilt made me not wish for much beyond a quiet existence where I could help others.

* * *

The time after that was better. Neither of us turned into anything we did not want to become. There was yet another war, more soldiers on more battlefields. I was a 17 year-old from the provinces, you were one from the capital city. I was forcibly drafted, sent away from my loving parents into the increasingly dour reports from our northern frontier. I got there in a cramped train full of other recruits where I managed to squeeze myself into a standing spot by a window. The train churned through a gray and depleted countryside that had recently seen major battles between our forces and those of the enemy. Some of their soldiers had been strung up in the few trees that remained to encourage the populace and remind them of the base and inhuman nature of our northern neighbors. The camp where I was to begin my training was on the edge of a large moorland, one of the major ones where young men who could’ve been singers, bakers, craftsmen, writers, fathers, doctors, fishermen, priests or farmers were turned into targets for the enemy to try out their new weaponry on. You had already been in training for a month, and were tasked to show the latecomers around and introducing us to army life. You seemed to take a liking to me in particular quickly and I thought I would stick around you out of pure necessity, going into the experience with the mindset of doing whatever it takes to survive and getting an excuse to get out of there as soon as possible. I first thought you were a brute who seemed to relish the thrill of battle, and the way you eyed me down when you thought I didn’t notice did not inspire confidence – definitely not somebody I wanted to spend my time around unless I had to, but you turned out to be something other than what I was expecting. The second night in the camp you asked me about my life back home and I showed you the seashell I had brought with me to remind myself of the sunny summers at my grandfather’s cabin, the only personal artifact I had managed to smuggle in, and something in you seemed to light up with interest. I talked about what I did with my time – I was always a studious child who was shaping up to be the second one in my family to attend university, after my uncle, and had more or less resigned myself to a dusty life among bookshelves and lecture halls before the war broke out. I brought up my interest in geography and biology, how I had built a terrarium in my room where reptiles I had caught in the woods near my house crawled around among green ferns, and you gave me such an unexpectedly kind smile. You admired people who lived a life of the mind and wished you could have had the opportunity to pursue it more. You were a more thoughtful person than you looked at first glance, and your passion for things was refreshing for someone who had been taught that a coolly detached way of looking at things was the best. You told me that you actually hated the leaders who had gotten us into this war and that the only reason you were there was because you were forced to. That surprised me given your obvious excitement at the military hardware and exercises, but you saw it as a kind of training so you could protect the things you thought were really important once the war was over. Before long we were taking every free moment to sneak off on our own and talk, me telling you about things I had learned in books or my intellectual uncle had told me, you showing me secret spots around the area that only you had known about before. We swore that we would protect each other so that we would make it through the war, and I would go to university in the capital city so we could remain close.

When training was over after a couple of months, our unit was sent further north to march across the moors toward a mining district right across the border that our nation had lost in the last war some 60 years ago. The loss of the area had been a large source of shame for our country, and our industrial capacity was not nearly what it was without it. The great river which runs through our capital starts in the small mountains that had been hollowed out by mining over the centuries, and it has always been an expedient shipping route as it runs through the hills and cliffs of the mining district into the flat farmland that surrounds the capital and into the sea beyond.

The march there was long and dreary, going through a beautiful but samey collection of barren moors criss-crossed by small streams of water. We barely saw any signs of human habitation while walking, and we often did not have the energy to do anything but collapse into each other’s arms and fall asleep when the days were over. After we had gotten past the moors, we came to a more wooded area and our commander told us we would be close enough to retake the mines any day now. When we had crossed the border we approached a small town that was located on a rocky outcrop above the river and were worried by the lack of any visible humans in the area. Our boastful commander raised our nation’s flag in the town square and proclaimed the mines regained, but you were convinced that the enemy was merely hiding somewhere. Sure enough, a large regiment had hid in the coal mine in the hill that raised itself above the town and we were forced to make a hasty retreat across the river and into the woods beyond. We were on the same boat as the enemy forces flowed down from the town and onto the shore like ants and I thought that this war may have been worth it just to bring me together with you, that it was truly awful but also exciting, that I couldn’t stop myself from kissing you once we were in safe territory again.

An enemy machine gunner spotted us as we jumped off the boat onto the opposite shore, which was covered with rocks that had been worn down to treacherously smooth shapes by the movements of water. I felt my knees bend as my boots hit the rocks, and my body was filled with rough pieces of metal as the gunner fired his weapon in a wide arch across the stones. You instinctively ducked behind the boat and one of our own soldiers managed to shoot the gunner before he could kill any more of us, but it was too late for me. I died before understanding what had happened and my body slumped down on the rocks, cracking my nose against them. My blood ran on and between the rocks and into the great river that had once trafficked ore to our great factories and now didn’t supply us with anything but fresh water. By the time it got to the next riverbend it would be so diluted nobody could know that it contained the last blood I would ever spill, and by the time it reached the capital there would be no signs that anything was anything other than normal.

I seem to linger behind for a while after each death. I don’t know why – an intelligent designer may have designed it so we would be allowed to make peace and see how our loved ones handle it, it could be the result of the soul taking a long while to transmigrate into the next life (I do seem to fade away gradually rather than flash away in an instant), or it could be something even more outlandish. This time, I stayed behind long enough to see you in the makeshift camp our unit had made near a larger village in the woods to the south of the border. News from all around the front were saying that the war was turning in the enemy’s favor and the anxiety among the soldiers and townsfolk was palpable. You were lying on a bed in one of the tents, staring up into the ceiling as the commander and captain discussed what to do with you. They debated whether or not to discharge you for shell shock, but at hearing that you sat up and promised them that you would to whatever it took to bring revenge and death upon those insects that had attacked us. Your face was angry and tense, but behind the frown I saw an emptiness behind your eyes and knew that you would not live long. I faded away shortly after, turning the thought that you might have lived a long and happy life if you hadn’t met me over in my head.

* * *

The next time, I was born in West Berlin in 1972, leading an unremarkable youth in a suburban neighborhood near one of the wall’s border control checkpoints. At the age of 21 I was in my second year of college studying biology and hoping to work as a scientist studying animals and plants. The wall has been down for three years and the feeling of excitement and optimism had subsided, being replaced with resentment towards the “backwards” Easterners and at being forced to subsidize them to bring them up to our level. Walking home from school one cloudy day in May, I decided to take an alternate route through a neighborhood that had been left to rot, not wanting to return to my cold 20 square meter apartment too soon. I was living in the former East to save on rent, near the top of a tower block that offered a beautiful view of the city but little else. It was poorly insulated and I would often hear my neighbors – a middle-aged carpenter and his alcoholic wife – fighting through the wall. I passed an abandoned cultural center and scanned the faded banners, the stained concrete and the tall grass with my eyes, enjoying the feeling of stumbling upon a place that I had not seen before and could not even guess existed until I saw a lean man about my age leaning against the side of a busted-out window. I knew there were people exploring the abandoned buildings of Berlin as a hobby and had thought about doing so myself, but I had not seen one at quite so close range before. I realized I would be very interested in knowing who you were and what had brought us to that same spot in that very moment – not least because I found you beautiful as you leaned back and gazed on the trees growing in front of the building, seeming deep in thought – until I realized I was rudely staring at a complete stranger and snapped out of it, making my way down the street at as brisk of pace as I dared and berating myself for being such a creep.

When I had started college and moved out of my parents’ place, I began to try to explore the world of romantic relationships which had been difficult when I still lived with them. I would often hit the bars in Schöneberg on the weekends in an attempt to find a man I could imagine sharing my life with, but so far it hadn’t yielded anything other than an odd friendship with the middle-aged couple who owned the bar Aischylos on a side street off Nollendorfplatz and a few one-night stands with men who, if they gave me their numbers at all, did not return my calls. I stopped having those after a while. One Friday a week after I spotted you in the abandoned building I was more down than usual, considering giving up the whole project and making another attempt in Paris, London, New York, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, wherever, after finishing my degree. I would mostly go to Aischylos to chat with the bartender. Until, on that strange day, you walked in through the steel-and-glass door. I recognized your somewhat hunched-over posture and strong but lean frame instantly and I could feel my face turning warm and my heart beating faster within seconds. I could not believe my eyes. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom before you could spot me to collect myself and question if my life actually consisted of real events before I decided I would ride or die and try talking to you. It turned out I did not have to make the first move, since you came up to me as soon as I had taken a seat at the counter.

“Hey! Don’t you look familiar? I can swear I’ve seen you somewhere before, I saw you as soon as you took a seat. My name is Eren Yeager by the way, nice to meet you!” you said and gave me a subtle grin as you stretched out your hand.

“Armin Arlert, the same. This probably sounds bizarre, but I think we just crossed each other on the street one day or something, I recognize you as well...” I said and shook your hand, hoping that I did not resemble a beet.

“Well anyhow, nice to be introduced. I usually hang around these haunts on the weekends, but I haven’t been to this particular bar before. We’ve probably seen each other around.”

I’ll admit our second meeting wasn’t smooth at first. Your beauty took my breath away and your cockiness made me even more unsure of myself, wondering why you bothered to spend time getting to know me. I felt somewhat put on the spot as I felt that I had to hide the fact that you had spent a lot of time in my thoughts since I first saw you and present myself as an interesting person who it was worth taking the time to know. The conversation flowed more easily as the night went on and we ended up chatting until the bar had almost closed, moving out onto a table on the street after an hour. We listened to the city quiet down as the sun set behind the facades of stone. We talked about a lot of things – how your relatives in the former East had reacted to the wall coming down, our shared fondness for exploration and traveling, what we had planned to make of ourselves once we became actual adults instead of just half-formed, in-progress ones, what we made of Berlin as a native (me) and as a transplant from a small town near Frankfurt (you). You told me about the often strange sights you had seen while exploring the city’s rougher areas and I told you about the things I’d learned about the many wonders of biology. Your Turkish father and German mother hadn’t approved of you moving to Berlin originally as they thought it was a den of sin, but you had let them know they would have to lock you into the basement if they wanted to stop you. You had come to Berlin 4 years ago at the age of 20 and now worked at a factory out in Tempelhof, putting together pieces of industrial machinery and often partying in Schöneberg late into the night as soon as you had time off. You were planning on studying more but didn’t really know what you wanted to do. As the night came to a close and the patrons stumbled their way home, giving approving looks to us as they went past our table, you asked me if you could follow me home and spend the night. I said yes but blurted out that I didn’t want to do anything sexual so quickly and felt a vague regret at saying it but also didn’t really know what else I could’ve said. You seemed somewhat disappointed and I worried that my prudishness had ruined my best chance in a long time, possibly the best chance I would ever get in Berlin. Your expression changed and you agreed and we spent a somewhat awkward 35 minutes walking and riding the U-Bahn back to my concrete box in the East. You pointed out that you were really fine with my decision and that you didn’t mind but I didn’t know what to say to that. I nodded and said it would be best if we didn’t think about it too much. Once there we undressed and laid in my bed. You put your arms around me and gently put your face in my neck as we fell asleep. I was mildly surprised at how gentle you were since your way of moving could otherwise be so clumsy.

I woke up before you as the morning light drifted through the blinds and hit the rug I had brought from my boyhood bedroom. I decided I would make a more luxurious breakfast than I usually did – I had a desire to spoil you for bothering to sleep over. As you sat up in bed, yawned and absentmindedly scratched your head the rays of the sun hit the right side of your body and I wondered what kind of comical streak of luck had brought me to this moment. The spring weather was very pleasant and we decided to spend the day traveling around the city to show each other our favorite spots. I took you to the Alte Nationalgalerie to show you some of my most beloved artworks – I loved Caspar David Friedrich but you, who hadn’t been much to art museums before, thought The Plague by Böcklin was one of the coolest things you’d seen. You wanted to wear it on a T-Shirt, but they didn’t sell one in the gift shop. The warm sunlight scattered on the surface of the Landwehrkanal and we bought some cheap falafel from a vendor, neither one of us having much money. We sat, shoulders touching, on the grass while eating and not saying much, most of the regular conversation topics being exhausted at the moment, and watched the birds gliding along on the surface of the canal and the Berliners around us going about their daily business, unknowing that the two young men they saw on the grass by the canal as they thought about how to make rent or why their children hadn’t called in a while or why all the factories in the East were shuttering were at the start of something neither one of them had experienced before. They did not know our names, and we did not know theirs.

We had our first kiss on the station floor of Kottbusser Tor that evening. There was a homeless man some distance from us who gave us an irritated stare, but for once I didn’t care. You had to go to work tomorrow, the factory giving you a pretty irregular schedule, and I had a big test coming up that my day with you had put me somewhat behind on studying for. We gave each other our numbers and promised to call as soon as we had enough time to spend it fruitfully with each other, and for once I had no doubts that you would return my call.

One year later we had moved in together into an apartment with high ceilings in Kreuzberg, our student loans combining to give us a higher standard than we could have gotten otherwise. On our days off we would ride the U- and S-bahn around the city to discover new places and restaurants and cinemas that we had not seen before, or just to look out the windows while holding hands. You brought me along for your hobby of urban exploration and we had soon charted most of the abandoned areas of Berlin. Your half-brother, who you had a strained relationship with, came up from his office in Frankfurt once and the first time we met he was surprised that his schlub of a brother had ended up with someone as prim and proper as me. He half-jokingly wondered if I did your homework for you. I said that I liked spending my time with someone who was more spontaneous than me, and you were not as schlubby as you can seem, anyway. He seemed suspicious of this, but I let him think what he liked.

His suspicions were proven wrong, as we stayed together until your death of lung cancer at the age of 76. We shared an almost absurdly conflict-free relationship. I don’t think either of us could come up with anything to fight about if we tried to. We got married shortly after it was legalized – I did not really care about it since it was our relationship that mattered and not our status in the government register, but you wanted to make a statement as you often did. The ceremony was conducted on the banks of the Müggelsee in early May to commemorate when we first met, the aspen seeds whirling through the air onto the surface of the lake. It was an unseasonably warm day, but it looked like it was snowing.

I stayed around for 7 years after you went. I missed you dearly, but you were such a vivid presence in my dreams and memories that I could bear your absence after such a long time by my side. I knew I would not stay behind for too long without you.

* * *

There often seems to be an element of drama in our lives, of outright pain and grief at times. I think we need it to an extent. We always bond over our longing for adventure, and the times in which we live out a regular, mundane life often have the vague sense that something is lacking. That time in Berlin was wonderful in many ways, and now that I can see a lot of the other ones I’m grateful to see that you were healthy and well-fed, but it also somehow felt like the world did not present enough opportunities for us to take part in it. I would sit in your lap and read aloud from books I was reading or writing and we would go on long trips hitchhiking through the Iberian Peninsula, our broken Spanish often leading us to locations far away from the ones we had planned to go to. We filled our days as well as we could, but we agreed that it was like we really wanted something very big and interesting to happen that would shake us out of our domestic comfortableness, but it never did. The moments where I get to share a breathless excitement with you are my very favorites, I think. Standing in the aisle at Aldi and debating which brand of frozen vegetable mix will serve our stew the best doesn’t have the same charm as escaping by the skin of our teeth from monsters or soldiers. Making our way across the misty moors towards the uncertainty of the mines, not knowing who or what might lie in waiting there as our luggage weighed heavy on our backs and our hated commander barked barely-intelligible orders, amazed at how beautiful the land and the birds and the sky were despite everything that had happened and was going to happen. I turned to you and smiled, you seemed to think the same thing as I and gave me an even bigger smile back and we had to stop ourselves from laughing out loud and ruining the solemn mood. Those are the times I really truly treasure. They make me feel so alive, and the intensity is only increased by getting to share them with you. I’m not sure if happiness is the absence of suffering or the presence of elation, but if pressed I think I would choose the latter.

* * *

There seems to be something in you, though, that is always pushing you towards enforcing your will with violence. I have never been on the receiving end, but at times you have gone so far as to lose my support. I am not always aware of this side of you which is often what ends up causing trouble. I think I can easily let my feelings for you blind me.

There were times when that part of you led us to very bad outcomes. The one when you tried to end the world was certainly one of the worst. I was so angry at you at the time, but from this vantage point I can see that you had a truly cursed fate then. Another time something like that happened, we were very poor and shared a room in a boarding house located in the meatpacking district in the outskirts of a vast industrial city. I had seen much violence at the hands of my adoptive father and the other boys at school, and you felt a lot of guilt about your comparatively easier life with your poor but loving family. One night, I woke up from a nightmare about my “father” and had to get out of bed and lean on the window, looking at the streetlights outside to calm down. I must have woken you up – you had a knack for sensing when I was upset about something – and you asked if I was remembering my childhood again. When I said that I had had another nightmare about it, I could see you tense up in the dark and your voice took that harsher edge that I both liked and sometimes feared. You said you felt so bad about how you felt powerless to protect me, that even if you tried your best the world would always do what it could to chew up and spit out fragile people like me who never did anything to deserve it. I took offense at being called fragile and you quickly held me close and said that that wasn’t what you meant, that you hadn’t referred to anything you thought was negative about me. We kept at it and eventually managed to at least move to a nicer boarding house, but you kept beating yourself up for not being able to help me and your family more. Around that time your adoptive sister had gotten laid off from her job at a textile factory, and the pressure on you to provide had gotten even greater. One day around that time I came home from night school to find you missing – odd, since you always wanted to be home to spoil me when I was done studying – but didn’t think much of it. I always thought you pushed yourself too hard for me and was glad to see you taking some time off for yourself. You were soon promoted to full-time and there was a kind of energy in you that hadn’t been there for in a long while. The months went by and I didn’t see you as much as I liked. You often had to work overtime but we did have more money than we’d had in ages, and your sister was getting back on her feet too. You were happy but began to get somewhat evasive about what you were feeling and thinking. I couldn’t read you as well as I used to and I wondered what you were doing when you said you were putting in all that overtime at the factory. The mob was hugely influential in those days and I worried that you had gotten involved in it somehow and that was how you made so much money, but you reassured me that that definitely wasn’t the case. You said that you had found something that would make all our worries go away if only I had faith in you. You didn’t want to say what you were doing and I was worried about this, but I gave you some time to do what you had to if you promised you would tell me eventually.

One day, some weeks after you told me that, I came home from work early one day to find you filling in your resignation form. You tried to hide it from me, which only made me more suspicious. I had no idea how we would manage to pay the rent if you did not have a job and confronted you about it, which is when you said that money would not be an issue for us anymore. You hadn’t actually been promoted to full-time but had spent those extra hours visiting an old friend of your father’s, who was learned in darker subjects and ran some kind of business out of his apartment in a more central neighborhood. He had promised you that there was a way to get out of this sense of powerlessness you were feeling and finally secure a good future for yourself and your loved ones. There was a price to be paid, but you did not have to be the one to pay it. You had been visiting him for months when you said you were working or visiting your family.

Soon money or aging or pain or anything else wouldn’t be an issue, you said, since your new form and powers would ensure that we would not have to obey anyone ever again. You said that we do not have to accept our poor lot, that you couldn’t wait until your project was complete and you could show me all you would then be able to do for me. You looked so sincerely happy when you said this, it scared me. There wasn’t even a hint of madness in your eyes. I was appalled and asked what the price for such privileges could be and you gripped me in a tight embrace, I resisted but you merely pushed your arms around me more firmly, and said that I didn’t have to worry and that it wasn’t anything not worth paying. When your pilgrimage was complete and I could see how strong you had become I would be convinced and forget that I had ever objected. I ripped myself from your arms and said that I couldn’t possibly let you do something like that and that we couldn’t be together if you did. You said you were sorry and pushed me down onto the bed, tying me up with cuffs you were keeping in a box underneath (you knew me well enough to expect me to find out and object) and gagging me with a cut-off piece of bed sheet. You said I wouldn’t have to worry anymore since it would be completed the next night and left me in our room which used to be our sanctuary from the world but now was something very different. After a couple hours spent going over my memories of you with tears rolling down my cheeks, your friend came and carried me into a car with darkened windows. The doorman of the boarding house was nowhere to be seen. Your friend was a horrid man, a tall and pale and bald one with teeth that clicked together as he spoke about the wonders I was about to see.

We drove in silence through the darkening city towards his apartment building. I thought about how much I missed the Eren who I would skip stones on the canals near the slaughterhouse with. Also, and I truly hated myself for thinking this, but there was one small part of me that thought this was thrilling and looked forward to the results of the ceremony. It had come out into the light during those hours I spent reminiscing after the initial shock had worn off. It loved you even more for being so courageous that you did something like this, and I could feel both parts of me battling each other inside my mind. It did not seem quite so obvious anymore which side would win...

* * *

You always want to protect me from the cruelties of the world, and I don’t mind you doing so. But really, I hope you understand one day that I want to protect you just as much. You have such a strong desire to change things and improve them, which I find inspiring since I can too detached, too analytical. But it also seems to me that you are looking for something to fight for and feel lost when things are too quiet. I want to help you see the wonder of _not_ always seeking struggle and for the most part I succeed, but other times… Well.

Others have often commented that we seem like an odd couple. That I should be with someone who reads as much as I do or that you should be with someone more passionate, more daring. They wonder why I want to be so much with a brute like you and why you’re so concerned about a wimp like me. Really though, there is no doubt in my mind that you are the only one for me. I can only hope that you feel the same way, if you have these moments between lives like I have. The others only see us on the surface and don’t realize what we bring to each other. I calm you down and convince you that you can’t always change everything, that you are fine as you are and you only need to exist to be of value. At my worst I retreat into passivity and convince myself that it’s all hopeless and that I can’t do anything. You help me snap out of it. We always do that for each other – we push and pull the other in the right direction.

I _love_ going off into the unknown with you. I just hate to see you go there all alone. Those are always the times that end up badly. I’m not as innocent as you sometimes think, you don’t have to conceal your darker sides from me. I think you can sometimes see me as someone who completely lacks your less pleasant parts so you can burden yourself with being the one who’s dark and difficult for my sake. At times I wish I could be that person for you, but I wish more strongly that you could see that I am as imperfect as you.

I wonder how long this has been going on. I don’t remember anything before the time previous the one you turned into that horrible bone creature and even then, the memories are fuzzy. I think we were in a place called Astrakhan, participating in a failed uprising against the Tsar. I don’t think we kissed each other then. There wasn’t the time and place for it. Did something happen then to start this whole thing off or can one soul only retain so many memories? Maybe after eons of time have passed, I will be back in this very same place thinking these very same thoughts… Now there’s a disturbing thought for you. You always like it when I come up with morbid things.

I can imagine a lot of worse fates than spending an eternity with you, though. Whatever it is that pulls us together, I never want it to stop.

I can feel that the next time will be starting soon. I won’t remember anything so my thoughts at this stage are pretty pointless, but I hope I get to keep you with me until we pass on. I hope I get to see you smile as the rising sun hits your face one more time.

I hope that we will be able to protect one other from the cruel sharp teeth of the rest of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is very welcome.


End file.
